Three Short Men Who Chose to Follow Jesus
I enjoy singing the Sunday School song about Zacchaeus, a short man whom the song calls a “wee little man.” I hope you know it. I would love to share the lyrics but I don’t know about its copyright.
The song tells this story:
One day Jesus was passing through Jericho. A man in Jericho by the name of Zacchaeus wanted to see Jesus, but he was a short man and couldn’t see over the crowd. Zacchaeus ran ahead of Jesus and climbed into a tree. Wouldn’t you love to see that little man peering down from that sycamore tree?
Out of the whole crowd, Jesus noticed this one short man. Jesus told Zacchaeus to come down in a hurry because He had to stay at his house that very day. Zaccheus obeyed.
This invitation led to an encounter between Jesus and people who didn’t like Him associating with sinners and tax collectors such as Zacchaeus. When Zaccheus revealed his repentant heart, Jesus said:
Today salvation has come to this house,
because he, too, is a son of Abraham.
For the Son of Man has come
to seek and to save that which was lost.
Luke 19:9-10
The traditional children’s song ends when Jesus invited Zacchaeus to his house. Thinking that the song should include the rest of the story, Ray wrote another verse:
Zacchaeus was a wee little man
But he stood very tall that day.
And Jesus said, “Unto this house
Salvation has come today. Salvation has come today.”
A few months ago Ray preached a sermon about Zacchaeus. Just days afterwards, we traveled to Urbana, Illinois, to attend the funeral of our friend Dick Oliver, who was finally free from his long battle with Parkinson’s disease. At the funeral, we were happy to see a man we had been acquainted with when we were in our late thirties and he was in his early twenties. I will call him Jim Jackson Jr.
We met Jim Jr. through his parents. Meeting his parents was memorable. We had never met the Jackson family until Jim Jr.’s sister reserved our church’s building for her wedding. As minister and wife, Ray and I were at the church building that night to help with logistics. To my surprise, Jim Jackson Sr. came to me after the wedding and said with deep emotion, “I need to come back to church.”
True to his word, Jim Sr. was at church the next morning, along with his family. At the funeral for our friend Dick, Jim Jr. told us that he was around twenty years old that Sunday and that it was his first time to go to church. He remembered that Ray’s sermon that day long ago was about Zacchaeus, and to our amazement, he also said that he had mentioned the sermon just a few days earlier to his own son.
Jim Jr. told us that he believed God led Ray to preach about Zacchaeus that day because his father was a short man. Jim also talked to us about the influence that our mutual friend Dick Oliver had been on his dad. Jim said, “Dad needed a friend like Dick.”
Our friend Dick was also a short man. His funeral was a powerful statement of what he believed. He had planned it himself in detail. Ray and I remember one of the last things Dick ever said to us. Yesterday I talked about a conversation in a pizza parlor and about our being faithful in our marriages. This story is also about marriage, conversation, and a pizza parlor. It occurred during a previous visit to Urbana.
During the visit, Ray and I went out to eat at a pizza chain our family had enjoyed while our children were growing up. We ran into Dick and his wife Kay at the restaurant. Dick came over to our table and said to us, “Keep loving each other,” the same message Ray’s dad had given to me years before.
We have so much power for good in other people’s lives, especially those people in our homes whom we see everyday. Let’s keep loving each other and be the friend someone else desperately needs us to be. Jesus said:
A new commandment I give to you,
that you love one another,
even as I have loved you,
that you also love one another.
By this all men will know
that you are My disciples,
if you have love for one another.
John 13:34-35